Sugar and lemon ricotta cookies

Basically, I completely forgot to post about these at the appropriate time (yes, it was two months ago), but I guess I just got too excited posting about other dishes. That's...good, right??? Or at least, forgiveable?

A sampling of the finished iced sugar cookies I made for
Christmas 2009. Note the sure-to-become canonical Christmas lobster.
The flamingo might just be too much of a stretch for Christmas.

The sugar cookies are a roll out the dough, cut out shapes, bake them, then ice and decorate them sort of cookie. If I have a tradition for holiday baking, this is my mainstay. The cookie recipe I use is basic and delicious - heavy on the butter--and the icing always comes out beautifully smooth and glossy - I believe this is thanks to the powdered egg whites in the icing.

Just-glazed lemon ricotta cookies, sitting innocently on the rack,
unaware they are about to be greedily devoured (i.e., eaten by me,
because of course I need to "test" them to make sure they taste OK
before anyone else can have any)

If you're cool with cakelike cookies and aren't too prone to getting into semantic arguments, the lemon ricotta cookies are a dependable bet. The fresh lemon flavor itself is prominent but not overly assertive, and the lemon glaze adds a nice but not overpowering sweetness. I love lemon and I like both cake and cookies and see no problem with combining the two, so I thought these cookies were great but can see why some might not be that into them.

Pickled daikon and carrot / Preserved lemon

Today's post is all about delicious yet easy to make preserved foodstuffs!


First up is pickled daikon radishes and carrot. Tasty on their own, but most likely to be eaten in conjunction with other things, pickled daikon can be found as the tasty bit of acidic crunch in Vietnamese banh mi. Banh mi are amazing to me, perfect sandwiches, with an ideal balance of flavors and textures when done well--tender bread with a bit of crisp on the outside, tasty meats on the inside, pickled daikon and cilantro and jalapenos on the inside. The pickles brighten up the flavors of the sandwich and offer a counterpoint to what can be a rich meat filling, not to mention again that delightful crunch. It's amazing what a big difference one ingredient can make to a dish.

Deliciously full, big jar of pickled radishes and carrots.
See, I knew there was a good reason to keep my giant
kimchi jars around long after the kimchi was gone.

But I digress. I first made these with the intention of making some of my own banh mi, which I did, but also realized how tasty they can be eaten on their own and in other dishes--see my previous post on pork belly buns, for a delightful example. There they acted as a perfect acidic and textural counterpoint to the richness and tenderness of the pork.

Pickled radishes are simple to make. Cut them up into the desired length and thickness - often done slightly larger than julienned - and make the brine. The brine is incredibly easy and simple too - a little salt and sugar, water, and white vinegar and you're done. After the vegetables have had some time to bathe in the brine, they'll emerge nicely crunchy, a little sour, and a little sweet. Delicious!

Next, preserved lemon. I hadn't heard of these before, but I was attracted to a lovely picture in a cookbook which was simply lemons in a jar with kosher salt and some lemon juice and decided I had to make these--so that I, too, could have a pretty jar of preserved lemons in my fridge.

Preserved lemon after being removed from the brine and rinsed off.
I have another giant kimchi jar with the remaining lemons pickling
in their brine, but they're no longer in the state where I could have
taken some pretty pictures of the jar. Shame on me!

The idea is to cut lemons (Meyer or regular, I used Meyer) into quarters vertically, without cutting all the way through so that the quarters are still attached to one another on one end, then pack the cavity of the lemon with kosher salt. Put those lemons all together in a jar, squeeze some additional lemon juice over the top and put the jar in the fridge. During the next couple of weeks, the jar should be accumulating juice as the flesh of the lemons break down.

I know next to nothing about Moroccan cooking, but apparently these are quite the magic ingredient in many a Moroccan dish and introduce an intense lemony, somewhat salty flavor that is quite different from using a fresh lemon. For the most part you'll be using only the rind of the lemon - after rinsing the lemon off.

Turnip cake

Turnip cake after steaming

I love dim sum, but I never think to make it myself at home--why bother to make my own dumplings when I can go out and have them served to me, and better yet, since it's dim sum, it's pretty much immediate gratification. My favorite thing (well, maybe my second favorite thing) to get at dim sum is turnip cake, especially when it's properly pan fried so that the surface is crispy and the inside is tender.

I recently found myself with some extra daikon radish on my hands--which, I learned after surfing the web for some new ideas for using up the daikon, is the "turnip" in the turnip cake. Yes--you read that right! Turnip cake is traditionally made with radishes, not turnips. Confused? Me too, but no matter--I found a recipe that taught me it is really quite easy to make one's own turnip cake at home, which will probably be better and fresher--tastier--than something you get in a restaurant.

A mixture of grated daikon, water, rice flour, small dried shrimps, chopped chinese sausage, and chopped green onion is all you need to make this at home. That and some way to steam the cake (it fits into an 8x8 square pan or an 8 inch cake pan, which is a bit big for fitting the pan into another pot for steaming). Another thing I learned is that turnip cake is steamed first so it's cooked completely before it even gets pan fried. You do want to pan fry it, just to give it that crispy edged texture. I was amazed at how easy this was, and perhaps more importantly, one recipe's worth made so much more than you get with one order of turnip cake at a restaurant. I could have ALL the turnip cake I wanted, without suffering the judgmental stares of the dim sum cart pushers!!!!!

Turnip cake after pan frying- crispy and tender!

Red cooked pork belly buns - revisited

Happy Valentine's Chinese New Year Day! I thought it appropriate to post about pork belly on this momentous occasion, because nothing goes better with any holiday than fatty pork.

Some things are so delicious you just have to revisit them as often as you can justify it to yourself - and maybe improve on them each time. As you may recall I posted about red-cooked pork belly buns a few months back. They were delicious--but then, it would be hard for pork belly not to be delicious--but needed something.

The first iteration of pork belly buns included some plain wilted spinach as a green inside the steamed buns. The greens provided a nice neutral flavored counterpoint to the rich pork belly, but the stems were a little tough to bite through and distracting when I just wanted to get to the delicious tender pork waiting inside, and the spinach added nothing in terms of texture to the buns.This time I included the pickled radishes I had made in place of the spinach--and added some fresh cilantro leaves as garnish.

Perfection.

The pork belly, so rich and fatty and meltingly tender and flavorful and delicious, goes perfectly with the crunchy radishes, and the acid helps cut through the richness of the pork. Cilantro adds a bright, warm flavor note. I could eat so many of these little sandwiches without getting tired of them, so constantly have to remind myself that just because the pickles counteract the richness doesn't mean I'm not consuming said richness. These buns are amazing. So many flavors and textures in a tiny little package. I wonder how soon my arteries can handle me making more...

Creamy potatoes

I'm a fiend for carbs, and potatoes are my very favorite food in any form, but I usually gravitate toward some form of roasting when I cook them myself. Well...this time I was ready for a change, which is why I was eager to try a new preparation which I came across in Canal House Cooking Vol 2. This recipe involves cooking the cut potatoes entirely on the stove, slowly simmering for about an hour in a mixture of milk (cream, if you so dare) and some butter until they are tender and have picked up the sauce's creaminess. Season that with salt and freshly ground black pepper, then sprinkle on some chives (I used scallions, since I had no chives on hand).

One of the most appealing things about this dish is that it has no specialty ingredients, so I don't necessarily have to plan ahead to make this --assuming I have potatoes on hand, anyway--and the utterly simple preparation allows you to appreciate each ingredient in a way you might not otherwise do, especially black pepper. I add it to almost everything I cook as a background note, but I rarely appreciate freshly ground pepper as much as I did in this dish.

Fresh pasta with olive oil and garlic sauce

Raw pasta just after being rolled out and cut into noodles

I've always been intimidated but intrigued by the idea of making my own fresh pasta (see my ravioli post). But after having lunch out one day where I had some amazing, toothsome Chinese housemade noodles, I was inspired to give it another try. I also thought that noodles might be a little easier than a filled ravioli. As far as a sauce, I decided to go with a very simple olive oil, garlic, and parsley sauce with a parmesan shaving garnish, allowing each of the ingredients and the pasta itself to take prominent roles. Of course, if the sauce only has 4 incredients including salt, you better be sure that your olive oil is sufficiently high quality--and if you're going to use parmesan, you better use the real thing--parmigiano reggiano. It's a little pricey, but it's completely worth it and a little goes a long way.

I still don't have a pasta machine and I'm not sure if I'll ever be making enough pasta at home to make it worth buying one, so once again I hand rolled the dough and hand cut the noodles. Since I wasn't trying to make a filled pasta, it was less of a problem and in a way having rough looking noodles really appealed to me. Plus--more surface area for sauce!

I allowed the dough to rest more than I had the last time before rolling it out, and I think that made a difference. I seem to recall during the ravioli episode that the dough kept springing back on me after I cut it, getting thicker and thicker, but didn't have that issue this time. The noodles did end up a bit on the thick side--I forgot that fresh pasta gets thicker when you cook it--but the sauce was delicious enough that it didn't matter. A fruity, olive-y olive oil, infused with garlic and parsley, went amazingly well with the fresh noodles, and parmesan shavings with their granular texture. The sauce itself was so good that it would probably be nearly as tasty with dried pasta, not to mention much faster to cook, but there's just something about toothsome homemade noodles you can't improve upon.

Finished and dressed pasta!

Pork shoulder braised with dried chiles

Pork shoulder, also confusingly called pork butt (it does come from a pig’s shoulder area—what a world!), has become one of my favorite cuts of meat to cook, thanks to my meat CSA and a lovely Alice Waters recipe.

Before the meat CSA, I would never think to buy a pork shoulder. They’re big (at least when cooking for one or two), they’re unwieldy, and what would I know what to do with a big hunk of pork shoulder? But I’ve learned that pork shoulder is one of those cuts of meat that benefit from long, slow cooking until they become very tender. Because of my occasional paranoia about not cooking meat enough, my unfortunate historical tendency has been to err on the side of overcooking the meat. And along has come a very forgiving cut, one that is probably hard to overcook, though I haven’t tested that theory. Combine this with a delicious and simple recipe and you can’t go wrong.

This pork was browned to get a nice crust on each side, then braised for hours in a Dutch oven in the oven in the most delicious smelling sauce I’ve made in a while—chopped vegetables, water, aromatics, and the secret ingredient, dried ancho and chipotle peppers which lent some warm, almost fruity flavors to the sauce. There was some spiciness as well, but very little heat. Also, the dried peppers, cooking in the liquid, reconstituted back to what I imagine is close to their full original size, so it was like a fun, food-related magic trick.

So lesson learned: braising is an awesome technique!! And the sauce itself is a simple-cooking revelation. Even to just smell its incredible aroma made me feel happy. Having no experience with cooking with dried anchos (and I’ve probably eaten them before somewhere, but they’re far, far from my area of expertise), after this I’ll definitely be figuring out how to use them again. But the pork itself had a lot of flavor and a great tenderness and is, again, very forgiving, meaning heating it back up for multiple rounds of leftovers is no problem at all.